


Being Darth Revan

by BeaconHill



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Multi, Redemption, Revan Regrets, Revan Remembers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23265511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaconHill/pseuds/BeaconHill
Summary: When the Republic hero Kiva Jin discovers she's Darth Revan, she also discovers that she doesn't want to be. As her memories return in full, she tries to make amends for what she's done, fix her mistakes and aid the people she hurt – and, most of all, to not be Darth Revan again.
Relationships: Alek | Darth Malak/Female Revan, Female Revan/Bastila Shan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Being Darth Revan

I'm Kiva Jin, a Jedi Padawan on a secret mission to find the Star Forge and save the Republic. But I know there's something wrong with me, and no one will tell me what.  
  
My body is _wrong_. I feel like someone took me and stretched me out. My feet hit the ground too early, like I'm walking down a stairwell and don't realize I'm past the last step. My arms are too long, my eyes too high up. I look in the mirror and I double-take. I used to pride myself on my looks – on the Endar Spire, I was Bastila's body double, and she's beautiful. But it all feels _wrong_ now. Sometimes I speak, and it's not my voice that comes out, it's something with a harsh Rim noble accent I can't quite place. Sometimes I laugh, and it's not my laugh. Everywhere I go feels somehow familiar, like I'm remembering someone else's trips to places I've never been.  
  
I feel my skin crackle and ripple when I touch it, like glass ready to break, like a shell ready to shed. It feels like, if I rub it hard enough, it'll peel off. I've tried, and it hasn't happened yet. But I still half believe it.  
  
People are scared of me. On Dantooine, all the Jedi Masters stared at me. Sometimes, when Jolee thinks I'm not looking, he watches me with pity deep in those big brown eyes. And I don't know why. It's like a great krayt dragon is hidden under my pale skin, wriggling around and clawing me up from the inside, and everyone knows but me.  
  
I rise from my bed, sweat beading on my skin, as my eyes search the cabin I now share with Bastila. I love her. We've been dating since Kashyyyk. But she _knows_ , I'm sure of it, and even she won't tell me anything! So I love her, but I don't believe her. Not about this. She knows what's happening, and she's hiding it. They all are.  
  
What scares me the most is that it seems like they _want_ me this way.  
  
I start to pace around the room. Am I being attacked through the Force? Is someone trying to take over my body, or brainwash me? I can't even guess – even the books the Jedi have given me don't say anything about signs like these.  
  
But they do tell me how to escape mental influence, throw out whatever intruder is in my head. I just have to do it.  
  
I know Bastila won't like this. None of the others will, either – my plan is a little bit crazy. If I tell them, they'll stop me. So I just won't tell them. When all of this is over, and my mind is my own again, I'll apologize. But I _have_ to do this.  
  
I put on my racing jacket and head into the _Ebon Hawk_ 's main hold, packed full of my friends.  
  
"Hey, everyone," I say, having to force my lifelong Coruscanti accent back into the words. "I'm gonna go hit the swoop track. See ya!"  
  
They wish me luck. I give Bastila a quick hug – she still blushes every time, that's so cute – before I run out into the Tatooine heat. They won't expect me back for a while, so by the time they realize something's wrong, I'll be far away. I clamp gently down on my bond with Bastila, hiding myself from her. Instead of the swoop track, I sidle into a dingy little shop by the desert gate.  
  
"Oh, it's our new swoop star!" says the big man behind the counter, sweat speckling his shirt. "I'm afraid nothing we have here will be fast enough for you, ma'am!"  
  
"Just rent me a speeder," I say, my voice rasping as if I had a bad cold. "Something with a good nav and a long range. I'm heading out to the desert."  
  
"Of course, ma'am!" he says, surprised, but I have no time to make nice with him, and so before too long I'm zipping over the sand, leaving a little dust cloud in my wake. There's a star map waiting on the dunes, but I don't go that way. Instead, I ride over the lonely sands toward Mos Eisley, to a place that shady little man in the swoop den was all too eager to tell me about. I see the field from miles away.  
  
Pale stalks rise from the desert sands, huge yellow luminous bulbs at their tops looking somehow too big for their stems, like they're balloons holding the whole plant afloat. Illicit fields of fragrant, beautiful plants. To most of the galaxy, vikranz bulbs are a potent narcotic. But we Jedi go mad for a leaf or two in a tea, a Force-active hallucinogen like nothing else. I've been reading the books the Jedi put on my datapad – it breaks Force delusions, glamors, and nearly everything else, a shock to the system that will rip away whatever is making me feel this way. I hope.  
  
I don't stop – if I do, the guards might notice me. So I just tear off some leaves with the Force and then drive the other way. No one follows me.  
  
When I do finally park the speeder, the sun is setting over a subterranean homestead, a moisture farm miles and miles from anywhere. No one would ever find me here. I stop the speeder, and step down the stairs to the open domed entryway.  
  
"Hey," I say, waving to the woman inside, wincing as I realize that the strange accent has come back. "Can I rent a room for the night? I'm a Jedi on a pilgrimage, and I need somewhere to sleep."  
  
The woman just blinks. Clearly, she's never been asked that before. "How much are you offering?"  
  
"A hundred credits now, a hundred more in the morning."  
  
The woman is shocked. That's a lot of money for a moisture farmer. "O-of course, then, Master Jedi! It's just... we don't have much here. I hope you won't be disappointed."  
  
"We Jedi don't need much," I say. "Just a bed, and some hot water for tea."  
  
"C-come in, then! I'll make up the spare room for you."  
  
The woman fusses over me, promising breakfast in the morning, a hot shower, anything I need. She leads me to a room full of junk. Aside from the bed, there are a few control consoles here, a whole shelf of parts, a worn plastic model of Revan's Mandalorian War flagship _Defender_ , and an old music player with a pile of worn cartridges. As the tea steeps, I set it playing, and pleasant Alderaanian electro-folk wafts out. She leaves, and I lock the door behind her.  
  
The tea feels warm and alive in my belly, squirming around, chewing at my body. It's a million times more than I imagined. Reserves of the Force I never even knew I had vent themselves all at once, sparks dancing across my skin, my hair standing all on end. I run to the bed, jump on like I'm a little kid again, and waves of power bounce me back into the air and keep me floating there, singing loopily along to the music as I roll and tumble in midair.  
  
Something in my mind cracks, and thoughts under pressure surge through, hissing and shrieking like steam from a kettle. The problem is, these thoughts aren't mine. They're so vivid and real they're almost like visions: talking in that strange accent, spending time with strange people, using the Force long before I was a Jedi.  
  
 _Shouldn't these be going away?_  
  
But, instead, what seems to be weakening are my _own_ memories. They're all still there – growing up on Coruscant, becoming a small-time con woman and Bastila Shan impersonator before the Republic found me, plucked me out of the slums and straight into my wildest, most wonderful dreams. But when I compare them with my memories of the black-skinned, white-haired girl with the weird foreign accent, they're like ghosts. Washed out, hazy, hard to see against the glare.  
  
 _I'm the fake_ , I realize, an unpleasant sinking feeling in my stomach. _I'm the intruder. Kiva Jin isn't getting her mind taken over – that girl is getting her mind back from me._  
  
How could this happen? The Jedi must have known – they must have _done_ it, erased her and installed me instead! Force, who _was_ I, that they would do something like that?  
  
Guess I'm just about to find out. With a belly full of vikranz tea, there's nothing I can do to stop this. Ready or not, here she comes.  
  
I mentally brace myself, and dive with my entire soul into the memories surging through me.  
  
The other girl was born on Zaxenna, eldest child of a noble family – and thus raised from birth to be a con woman, just like me. We'd all heard of Zaxenna and its most famous saying – _commoners might trick a man, but nobles trick whole worlds_. It feels... strangely like an honor, to know I was born there.  
  
Naturally, Zaxennans are not trusting people. But by the time I turned nine, my family finally accepted the obvious: that I was Force-sensitive. And, reluctantly, they let the Jedi take me to Coruscant, and my training.  
  
I was an instant prodigy – not quite _as_ instant as the second time around (no wonder), but still, I learned the Force faster than anyone else, becoming more powerful than anyone else, gathering the best and brightest – not to mention the strangest – as my circle of friends. My best friend, Mako, was the biggest, kindest boy in either of my sets of memories, a light-skinned, bald-headed kid with two pale blue tattooed stripes running from just above his eyes, over his scalp, and down onto his neck.  
  
It dawns on me as I watch that I really am the same person as in the memories – I have the same sense of humor, the same lightsaber technique, the same skills and quirks and style and everything. Only my memories and my body were ever changed.  
  
The name I was born with was Rivasa Sajisatha. Riva, for short. I know what that sounds like, and I know who my old friends became – but I can't truly accept who I was until I watch my past self raise that famous red-and-black Mandalorian mask to my face.  
  
 _I was Darth Revan_.  
  
Force. No wonder they don't trust me.  
  
It's an impossible revelation. If I weren't deep in the Force, in a vikranz tea trance, it would be incomprehensible. But the Force lives in me, and I _know_ it's true.  
  
And in that moment of knowledge I have no fear at discovering my true nature, no hesitation to return to the dark, not even a thought for what my companions or my lover might think of me. I only rejoice at finally returning to myself, at my power and memories restored.  
  
With every passing second, I grow more certain that I will be Darth Revan again. And I have a plan. I always do.  
  
My body and mind were taken from me, the great and terrible Sith Lord I once was muzzled and chained to serve the Jedi and the Republic. But I know secrets now, hoarded knowledge from the horrors of the past, alchemies far beyond those meddling Jedi who hoped to seal me away behind Bastila Shan's stolen shape. I can free myself. I can put things right.  
  
With my true power, it takes but a moment's exertion to grab hold of the chains that bind me to Bastila's form, and snap them into a thousand pieces. My body reforms itself in an instant. I can feel my spine shatter and reconnect, my bones shrinking and bending, my skin melding and morphing. It hurts worse than my near-death on the flagship had, but I don't care. When I stand up from the bed, I'm back. I turn to the mirror in the corner, and for the first time in months, I see myself looking back: dark skin, curly white hair, big blue eyes.  
  
I also see my robes hanging off me like a tent, and I snort, roll my eyes. Bastila is at least six inches taller than me – honestly, the only person on the Ebon Hawk whose clothes might remotely fit me is Mission. That's _if_ I go back to the Ebon Hawk – but with three Jedi to corrupt, it's certainly a tempting option.  
  
Of course, I can't corrupt them if they don't even recognize me. Can I turn back into Bastila?... oh, I _can_! Excellent. And it didn't hurt quite so badly that time. Bastila had freely given me her form, intending it a straitjacket for the Dark Lord. Now, it's my disguise – as I turn her, and all of them, to the Dark Side.  
  
And then it'll be time to make Darth Malak suffer. As he deserves. But as I remember my former apprentice, two memories flash through me, rattling my mind like lightning.  
  
In one, I wear a white dress, standing with Malak – _Mako_ , my memory reminds me – on a small stage amidst pink sands, a woven canopy hanging over our heads. The audience is small – a handful of soldiers and renunciate Jedi, our closest companions in the Mandalorian Wars. Much to my surprise, Vrook is here, too – my old master has a wide smile on his face, gladly reflecting our happiness. He had to know that this meant we would forever leave the Jedi Order – as if the war hadn't been bad enough. But as we did last time, we make this leap with his blessing, Sith take the Council's retribution.  
  
 _We married_ , I realized. _Malak and I. After the Mandalorian Wars._  
  
I spend a moment – just a moment – letting all my memories of Mako flood through me. We were best friends, fellow soldiers, lovers, schemers, husband and wife, master and apprentice. It was hard to believe that we were even apart from each other – let alone that _he had betrayed me_!  
  
And that almost makes me even angrier, my restored love for Mako summoning fury– until the second flash of memory. Him and me in our bedroom on the _Infinite_ , in our pajamas. My deep red lightsaber is alive in my hand – and he's clenching his teeth in pain as he grips a saber wound in his side, blood trickling down onto the transparisteel floor.  
  
 _What?  
_  
I can feel goosebumps forming on my arms. In my in-between state – no longer Kiva Jin, but not yet truly Darth Revan – I don't recognize this memory. Any of it. Not the fiery anger that held me in its grip, not hurting the man I love – and definitely not the sadistic pleasure of doing it.  
  
Another memory pulls me in, despite my growing horror.  
  
 _Mako didn't take to the Dark Side like most of us did. At the beginning, that was cute. He always had been the big fuzzy teddy bear of the bunch. But after the war started, it stopped being quite so funny. He's my apprentice, the one I trust most. I need him. And he keeps screwing up!  
  
I still love him, of course, but he needs to get his act together. And, hey, doesn't pain lead to the Dark Side? Really, I'm helping him out!  
_  
 _Mako steps out of the bathroom wearing his big fuzzy bathrobe, water beading over his tanned skin, but he freezes when he sees that I'm still in my full armor, tapping a datapad against a gauntlet.  
  
Good. He's learning.  
  
"What's wrong?" he asks, but his whole body is tense. He knows what's coming.  
  
"You let them escape, Malak," I say, my voice even lower than my usual affected Darth Revan tone. "_Again _. It's enough to make me think you don't even_ want _to kill Jedi."  
  
"I... I'm sorry, Riva," he says. "I was trying to catch them, it's just... they were good at dueling, and fast, and I was on my own. I know I'm not as good as you, but—"  
  
"Sorry works the first time. Maybe the second. It's been months, and I am tired of your excuses." I take one of my sabers from my belt, weigh it in my hand. "You know what I think? You're not scared of my lightsaber anymore, _sweetheart _. I haven't hurt you that badly yet, have I? And now you think it's going to be skin deep forever." I shrug, a smirk spreading over my face. "You have thirty seconds. Persuade me not to."  
  
"Riva, I... know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but... I don't like what the Star Forge has been doing to you. We started all this to help people, to change the Republic! And now we're acting like a replay of Exar Kun! Or... or the Mandalorians. And I just... I can't believe this is really you. You don't even have your own face any more! You're so... so pale... I'm begging you, at least stay away from it for a few days!"  
  
"So _that's _why you can't even kill a few measly Jedi? You're spending all your time fretting about how the Star Forge is turning me evil? And_ ruining my complexion _?!" My voice turns mocking on the last words. "I will cut that lying tongue out of your face," I promise, getting to my feet, lighting my saber.  
  
He backs away, heading for the door, but it's locked. Like always. His lightsaber is right there on the rack and he doesn't take it – what a miserable excuse for a Sith, not even fighting back – and then I throw him into the wall with the Force, his head cracking hard against the metal door. I hear bones break, and I'm idly curious which ones.  
  
Mako is stronger than me. Much bigger than me. And it doesn't matter, because I have the Force. I kneel over him, my foot planted on his chest. I hold him still as I bring my lightsaber within an inch of his chin. Close enough to singe. I hold it there for a second, and he stares at me, terrified. I pull it away, and he starts to relax – and then I strike, cleaving his lower jaw clean off in one blow.  
  
He screams, a strange, incoherent, muffled sound. He stares at me, somehow seeming more shocked than hurt, and it's the funniest thing in the world to me. He tries to scramble away on his arms and legs, but I'm still holding him with the Force. He can't move. The jaw falls to the floor with a splat as he starts to cough and splutter, choking on his own blood. I flip him onto his chest, and a pool of blood starts to spread. By mistake, I step in it, and then I wipe my boots off on the back of his robe like it's a doormat. And only then do I finally call for help.  
  
A training accident, I say, and they don't believe it. Of course they don't. He's still wearing his bloody bathrobe. They know what they should do – call in the MPs, have me locked up. Give Mako the support he needs to tell them what really happened. Except I'm the Empress. No one can stop me if I don't submit. And Mako is too scared and humiliated and fucked up to admit anything. So no one says what we all know. They patch him up. There's more I could do, if I could scrape together some compassion. I could heal him, make it like nothing ever happened. But I don't, and the doctors can't, and so he loses his jaw.  
  
He spends that night in the medical bay. Private room, of course. Nothing but the best for the First Apprentice. But the next night, he comes home. And he sleeps in my bed, again. What else can he do?  
_  
I stumble to the floor, my head cracking against the wall. The hands that held that lightsaber claw at the rough permacrete. I kneel low, and then vomit, my dinner spilling out onto the floor.  
  
I can still smell his flesh burning, hear his scream, and I just can't take it! There was no _reason_ to hurt him like that, he wasn't armed, he wasn't fighting back! I remember enjoying it, but I don't _understand_. Why? What made me like it? I... I _don't_ just like to hurt people, do I? I've _never_ done anything like that, not since I stopped being Revan!  
  
 _But you are Revan now,_ the Force whispers in my ear, and my false form slips away from me. I'm forced back into Revan's body, and it hurts. _Her temptations are yours._  
  
The image flashes through my mind, just for a moment, of Bastila lying on the ground in her own blood as Mako once did, and I'm standing over her, and I'm smiling.  
  
"Stop," I whimper to no one, curled on the floor, my hair trailing through the pool. "Please. I don't _want_ to be Revan."  
  
 _It's too late for that, young one._  
  
Force. I... I had _wanted_ this, when I first remembered. Betraying the Republic, the violence of the war, my dependence on the Dark Side of the Force – none of those shocked me. All were justified in my memories. With all the sophistry of a proper Sith Lord, I could even look back at what I had done and believe it good. But there is no excuse for what I saw. Something deep in my core doesn't want to be Revan any longer, doesn't want to be someone who can watch poor Mako hurt and revel in it, who can break the man I love with my own lightsaber and rejoice.  
  
 _Did you think that was the only time you betrayed a friend?_  
  
With the vikranz tea in my belly, I can't control my memories, no matter how horrifying they are. There's nothing I can do to stop the visions, rapid-fire now, not just of Malak but others too – Master Vrook, Viazna, Morgana and Bao-Dur, the Republic soldiers I subverted and the ones I left behind, and Malachor, oh, _Force_ , Malachor... I made Meetra push the button and let her leave to Force-knows-where! And Noyren just _vanished_ after the battle – showed up at the party and was never seen again. And I never tried to help either of them! I retch again, my fingers scratching at the ground, but this time, nothing comes up but bile, burning at my throat.  
  
 _Do you understand?_ asks the Force. It's not a real question, not words that anyone has verbalized but a feeling, a pressure wave that I can sense. _Do you feel it yet, or do you_ need _to see more?_  
  
I hope so. I don't know how much more I _could_ feel. In all my memories, in either of my lives, I had never been brought so low as this. Force, it's not too late, is it? Am I _already_ Revan again? Will I do to my friends and my lover what Revan once did to her husband?  
  
 _You can still be Kiva Jin, too,_ says the Force. _The Dark Side is always a choice._  
  
I breathe out, slumping limp into the cold permacrete, the tension finally starting to slacken. I don't have to fall again. I don't have to be who I once was.  
  
But then, just because I can choose not to fall to the Dark Side, doesn't mean I'll love everything that goes along with that choice.  
  
What should I do now? I... I shouldn't be the one who decides. I need to come clean. Tell Bastila everything. Go back to Dantooine, and listen to Vrook and the Jedi Council. Do what they say, whatever that is.  
  
The Jedi wiping my memory... was surprising. Almost shocking, that they would do something like that without my consent. But in so doing, they took away a burden that I had no idea was there until I brought it down on myself once more. And now I was terrified that it would crush me whole. _They did the right thing_ , I realized. _Not the perfect choice, but the best one._  
  
If I could go back and tell myself to trust in Bastila and the Jedi, I would.. Now that I know who I am, what they've done to me, what I've done to them, trusting them is harder, but... but I have to.  
  
There are still a lot of things I disagree with the Jedi Order about, but that doesn't really matter. _I_ am a deranged former Sith Lord. For all the Jedi Order's faults, for all that they probably want to see me punished for what I've done, I know they'll keep me sane, I know they'll keep me from hurting people again.  
  
And... I have to keep helping the Republic.  
  
We're spending all this time trying to hunt down the Rakatan Star Maps when I have a half-dozen hideouts with full Imperial navigational databases. I can shorten our quest by months, maybe shorten the _war_ by months. I can bring my Empire down, and the galaxy needs it. That's probably why the Jedi let me out in the first place, that and to defeat Malak—  
  
Another image flashed through my mind, and I crumpled once more.  
  
No. Not defeat Mako. I... I can't. I can't hurt him again, and... if I cooperate, if I work with the Jedi and the Republic, I can at least try to... to get him to surrender, to get him help after it's all over. This isn't his fault. He didn't _want_ this – I forced him into it. I broke him. He deserves better, and I have to try. No matter what.  
  
So I'm fighting for the Republic, for the Jedi... and for Mako.  
  
And as I make my decision, the last of the fog and nausea hanging over me lifts. I stagger to my feet, shakily transforming back into Kiva Jin once more. I clean up after myself, take a shower, change my clothes. I spend maybe thirty minutes just trying to... to decompress. I have a glass of water, and a few little crackers. My heart is still racing.  
  
I turn out the light, and lay in my bed, and try to get to sleep. It takes a while, but that's OK.  
  
Tomorrow, I'll drive back to Anchorhead. It's time to face the Jedi.


End file.
